Say au revoir to Hailo. The taxi cab-hailing app that recently tapped the likes of “The Rent is Too Damn High” guy Jimmy McMillan for its latest ad campaign last month is calling it quits on North America.
According to a release, Hailo President and co-CEO Tom Barr said that the company, which launched three years ago and is available in five U.S. cities and two Canadian ones, is ending operations in North America to focus their efforts on expanding in the European and Asian markets. The reason they’re giving up on North America? The “astronomical marketing spend required to compete,” Barr says, which makes “profitability for any one player almost impossible.”
Indeed, with companies like Uber, Lyft, and Sidecar, taxis around the country are struggling to compete. Hailo, which works with the D.C. Taxicab Commission to help users hail a cab, charges a fee of $1.50 for every hail. As taxi cab industries across the nation figure out how to compete with the lower costs offered by Uber, Lyft, and Sidecar, it’s not totally surprising that Hailo is too.
A spokesperson with Hailo didn’t say when operations would cease.
Anyway, here’s the full announcement from Barr:
“Since launching almost three years ago we have carried over 20 million passengers and are proud to be the highest rated taxi app in many cities. We’re particularly excited about the strength of our business in Europe and in Asia, and the set of new services built on our technology, from Pay with Hailo and Hailo for Business to our plans for a concierge service.
“In the next phase of our growth, we have decided to put all of our energy and resources into these areas. We have therefore decided to end our operations in North America, where the astronomical marketing spend required to compete is making profitability for any one player almost impossible.
“This has been a difficult decision to make, and we are very sorry for the impact on our colleagues who will leave the company and are doing everything we can to help them with their future careers. We and our investors are confident that our sharpened focus on Europe, Asia and services will help us have the biggest possible impact for our passengers and drivers.”
We are proud to announce that Hailo co-founder Jay Bregman is back at it again. He is starting a new business and so has decided to leave Hailo, where he remains a significant shareholder. Less than three years from its launch in London in November 2011, Jay built the team to hundreds of employees across twenty global cities. “As always it is a bittersweet moment – but Hailo has grown far faster than I ever could have imagined and there are far better people to take it from here. Over the last few months I have been seduced by recent developments in robotics and it seemed the time was right to build something new,” said Bregman.
